‘Frankenstein’: The Futility of Thoughtless Ambition
Victor Frankenstein is an 1800s personification of hustle culture
Vanity masquerades as individuality. Selfishness masquerades as acheivement. Pointless pursuits masquerade as progress.
Victor Frankenstein embodied these ideas when he devoted years of his life to merciless toil in the name of science. He was vain, selfish, and pursued great accomplishments, not for the sake of improving the world or helping people, but for his own ego and legacy. The cruel twist of irony in Frankenstein is that exactly this arrogance doomed him to a life of vicious misery.
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, the 1818 classic of gothic horror and science fiction, in the age of—and largely in response to—the Industrial Revolution, a time of great human “progress” and “achievement”. It is a harrowing tale of a scientist that goes too far and creates a monster in his desire to learn “the secrets of heaven and earth”. And although he occasionally frames this thirst for knowledge as a driver, the much greater desires, by his own admition, are glory and power. Frankenstein says, “A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.”
I see a lot of parallels between the time that Frankenstein was written and our own. The increase in the use of machines to produce goods during the Industrial Revolution can easily be compared to the rise of computerization and AI. Capitalism was on the rise; now we live in a modern dystopia of late-stage capitalism. Scientific breakthroughs that change the way we live are made at breakneck pace, as they were in Mary Shelley’s time. Injustice—though objectively much worse at the time of Frankenstein’s writing—has wrought frustration and social upheaval in both periods.
Art: Legendary Comics
Romanticism ideals of the imagination, individuality, connection with nature, and the importance of subjectivity arose largely as a response to the Age of Enlightenment, a philosophy centered on the importance of knowledge obtained through reason and scientific empricism. I am hugely summarizing a complex topic here (of which I am by no means an expert), but it is important to note that Romanticism, as well as Shelley’s feminist mother and anarchist/utilitarianist father, heavily impressed upon Shelley and her writing.
The story of Frankenstein’s inception is legendary in that it took place during a novel-writing competition involving several key Romantic thinkers, such as Lord Byron, Mary’s husband Percy Shelley, and Mary herself. Byron’s physician, John William Polidori, wrote a short story called “The Vampyre” which would later serve as inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But all would eventually bow in utter defeat to Mary Shelley, as she wrote the beginnings of what would turn into Frankenstein, a philosophical and hauntingly tragic story that quite literally created a new genre—science fiction.
So what is Frankenstein, at its core? A cautionary tale about the futility of vengeance? A feminist critique on men’s obsession with innovation at the cost of themselves and everyone around them? A religious allegory of a false god and false devil who are both monsters in their own respects? Quite probably, it is all of these things, and you could write entire books on all of them. But I want to focus on Mary Shelley’s examination of the nature of achievement itself, and what happens when you achieve without purpose.
The perception of Frankenstein and his monster has been warped through countless adaptations to a point that people who haven’t read the novel likely think the monster’s name is Frankenstein. If that is you, a quick clarification from the introduction of my edition by Karen Karbiener. “Our confusion of creator and created, as well as our interest in depicting the creature’s human side, indicate an unconscious acknowledgement of a common and powerful reading of Frankenstein: that the monster and his creator are two halves of the same being who together represent the self divided, a mind in dramatic conflict with itself … the monster/ creator conflation most forcefully conveys this idea of humanity’s conflicting impulses to create and destroy, to love and hate.” (p. xvii)
Art by Lynd Ward
SPOILERS AHEAD (if you want to skip the summary, scroll to ‘END SPOILERS’)
We are introduced to Victor Frankenstein by way of an arctic explorer in search of the North Pole, which had not been officially discovered at the time. People only knew of its existence because of Earth’s magnetic field. The explorer, named Walton, describes it as “the wondrous power which attracts the needle.” Walton finds Frankenstein on a dogsled edging death. “His limbs were nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering. I never saw a man in so wretched a condition.” (p. 21)
Aboard his ship, Walton becomes friends with Frankenstein, noting his benevolence and sweetness, and his melancholic despair. Walton sympathizes for Frankenstein’s tribulations, wondering, “How can I see so noble a creature destroyed by misery, without feeling the most poignant grief?” (p. 23)
Eventually, Frankenstein regains some semblance of strength, and relays his life story to Walton, who transcribes it as a letter to his sister. Frankenstein clearly relates the parallels of his own story to Walton , saying, “You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine did.” (p. 25)
Victor Frankenstein was a precocious, eager, and intelligent child—he wanted to understand the way things work, the secrets of nature. “The world to me was a secret which I desired to divine. Curiousity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture…are among the earliest sensations I can remember.” (p. 32) Frankenstein looked back on his childhood with “exquisite pleasure”. As he learned and explored, Frankenstein became absorbed in natural science (or natural philosophy, as it was called). He read voraciously the works of ancient alchemists and philosophers, becoming entranced by their lofty ideas and desire to achieve greatness. These ideas were outdated even for the time, which Frankenstein discovered when he went to college, but still he commited to being their vehicle. He found the work of modern scientists like Isaac Newton far too conventional and unimaginative.
From an early age, Victor dreamt of the accolades that would await his discoveries in these supernatural forms of science. “Wealth was an inferior object, but what glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render a man invulnerable to any but a violent death!” (p. 35)
Here is the first time we see the true motives behind Frankenstein’s actions; he didn’t care about advancing medicine or helping humanity, he was in it for selfish glory. And even after his endless misery, Frankenstein still fails to recognize its true impetus: his own arrogance. Rather, he blames destiny. “Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.” (p. 37)
Victor at school (Bernie Wrightson)
Frankenstein’s mother died, and he left for college. He threw every ounce of energy into study, proving his remarkable intelligence, but also his dangerous obsession with grandeurs of immortality and power. He sunk into his studies and experimentation, seeking discovery. Soon, he became absorbed with the question of life and death, and whether life could be transmitted back into a corpse.
These ideas were certainly influenced by Galvanism, a concept which, at the time of Shelley’s writing Frankenstein, seemed a very real possibility for reanimating corpses. The concept was introduced when Luigi Galvani performed an experiment in which he conducted electrical currents into a frog’s leg, causing it to twitch. He believed that this indicated an “animal electricity” that gave life to organic matter. Of course, we have the benefit of hindsight in knowing that this discovery could never reanimate life into a corpse, but the idea certainly influenced Frankenstein, although the specific method Victor Frankenstein uses is never known.
Frankenstein began obsessing with death, sneaking into graveyards to watch decaying bodies. “Darkness had no effect upon my fancy; and a churchyard to me was merly a receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm.” (p. 46) As he learned, Frankenstein became more confident that he could bestow animation upon lifeless matter.
Frankenstein finally provides some wisdom at this time by telling Walton, “learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.”
Victor fiending in the graveyard (Wrightson)
Frankenstein is rich with theme and philosophy, but this is the message that I wish to analyze, because I feel it is most relevant in the time we live in. The concept of achievement, of ambition, of success. The pointless vanity that drives much of our desire to accomplish. But we’ll get into this more later.
Victor Frankenstein spent the next two years devoting himself to this toil, depriving himself of rest and health, never communicating with his loving family. He was a man on a mission, any negative consequence simply collateral damage.
Eventually, Frankenstein achieved his goal and created his Monster, stitched together with limbs, organs, and appendages of corpses collected from the graveyard. “His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!—Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast wiht his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same color as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.” (p. 51)
“A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility”
The Monster came to life, and immediately Frankenstein became horrified at his 8-foot tall creation. He rushed out of his laboratory and wandered the street in a panic. He cursed the wretch and rejected it, and felt only elation when he returned to discover the monster has vanished. Again, we see Victor’s selfishness and thoughtlessness. Rather than take accountability for the monster he created, he leaves it to fend for itself.
Later in the story, Frankenstein returned home to find his little brother had been murdered. When he spotted the monster at the sight of the crime, he knew that it was responsible. Still, Victor did not confess what he’s done—not because he feared nobody would believe him, but because he feared what they would think about him—and allowed a falsely accused family friend be sentenced to death.
After a good deal of whining at his wretched condition, Frankenstein went off to clear his head by hiking in the Swiss Alps, and upon reaching the summit, the monster approached across a sheet of ice, running with “superhuman speed”. Frankenstein and his monster then commenced a rap battle in which Frankenstein dropped bars such as, “Begone, vile insect! or rather, stay, that I may trample you to dust!” and the monster replied with, “if you refuse [my conditions], I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.” We’ll come back to the conditions that the monster proposes, because it is here that we find out what the monster has been up to since his creation.
The Monster came into being confused and afraid. He was a newborn baby trapped in a giant’s body, and described his memory and sensations during this period as “confused and indistinct.” He took solace in a nearby forest, discovered the wonders of fire, and subsisted mostly on berries, nuts, and roots. The creature soon learned that humans are super not chill with him! When he happened upon a village, the people shrieked, ran away, or attacked him, and he escaped with injuries from stones thrown at him.
Art: Lynd Ward
A cottage in the countryside became his residence for the next few months, during which time he learned about the human condition, along with how to read and speak, thanks to the family that lived there. He also learned the family’s life story, which the monster relays to Frankenstein. If you’re keeping track at home, this is now a life story within a life story within a life story, all of which trusty Walton is relaying in detailed letters to his sister.
“To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation.”
The Monster’s affinity towards the cottagers swelled, and he took up random acts of kindness, such as gathering wood and clearing snow, but wished more than anything to make himself known that they might love and accept him. But he recalled the villagers’ reaction and delayed for months, until one day he formed a plan. The father of the family was blind, so the creature figured that if he introduced himself when the father was alone, the father would be unprejudiced towards his unseemly appearance, and could convince the family not to flip out.
The plan went well, at first, but soon the rest of the family returned, and running out of time, The Monster dropped to his knees and confessed everything to the blind father. The family walked in and saw an 8-foot tall monstrosity clutching the feet of their helpless father, and naturally did not take it to well. The Monster ran off into the woods, cursing himself, his creator, and the family, but eventually returning to give them another chance. However, when he learned that the family moved out of the cottage entirely, rage overcame him and he burned down the cottage.
Two final events pushed The Monster past the brink and into wrath and revenge. First, the creature rescued a young girl from drowning in a stream, but when an older man found them, he shot the monster with his rifle and ran off with the child. Second, the creature found a young boy, who upon seeing the beast, yelled at him and said, “My papa is … M. Frankenstein.” Hearing the name of his cursed creator, the monster decides that the boy will be his first victim and strangles him.
“I, too, can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable: this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him.”
Barry Moser: No father watched my infant days
The Monster finished his speech to Frankenstein with a demand. He wished for Frankenstein to make him a female counterpart. He claimed his good and benevolent being was debased by the rejection of humans, and now he was miserable, lonely, and wretched. When Frankenstein refused, The Monster re-avowed his vengeance. “I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear; and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear indestinguishable hatred. Have a care: I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth.” (p. 129)
After extensive argument, Frankenstein consented to The Monster’s demands and he ditched his family and friends to toil in squalor on a scarcely populated island off the coast. But he soon had second thoughts. What if the second beast does not accept her condition of isolation with The Monster? What if she is even more wretched than he? What if…shudder…they can do the dirty and make little monster babies??
One night, having these thoughts, he saw the dæmon spying through a window, “a ghastly grin wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me.” Trembling with passion, Frankenstein destroyed the second creature he’d been working on, vowing never to fulfill his promise.
This act launched The Monster full-tilt into vengeance. After promising Victor, “I will be with you on your wedding night,” The Monster began killing Victor’s friends and family, one by one, culminating in the murder of Victor’s beloved Elizabeth on the night of their wedding. Frankenstein had stupidly assumed that The Monster’s words meant that he was going to kill Frankenstein, so he left Elizabeth alone.
Me, to Victor
Having lost everyone he cared about, Frankenstein swore vengeance of his own on the Monster, and began following him, visualizing a grand finale in which one of them would die. But The Monster was only toying with Frankenstein, and being better equipped to handle cold, he led Victor farther and farther north, until they needed to use dogsleds to traverse massive ice-sheets. Here is where Watson finds him in pitiable condition, all his sled-dogs dead but one.
Victor finishes telling his story to Walton, who has come to love him like a brother and sees him as a faultless victim of this Monster’s brutality, a viewpoint funnily echoed by the notoriously unfaithful Percy Shelley. One cannot help but feel sympathy for Victor—he has indeed endured unimaginable tragedy—but even on his death bed he fails to accept responsibility. “Farewell, Walton! Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.”
We get one more run-in with Frankenstein’s Monster. After the death of his creator, he comes to say farewell and expresses regret, but blames the constant rejection he faced as the cause of his malignity.
“No guilt, no mischief, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes the malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man [Satan] had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.”
The Monster’s self-pity, while it doesn’t excuse his murder of innocents, is more understandable than Frankenstein’s, and he at least expresses genuine remorse for his actions. Frankenstein only expressed regret for the pain that his actions caused himself; it never felt sincere to me. And in the end, The Monster vows to travel as far north as he can and build a funeral pyre that will destroy his remains and any evidence that might lead to another creation as himself from being.
END SPOILERS
savannahhorrocks on Weasyl
Victor Frankenstein is not an inherently evil man. He is pushed to immorality by factors that affect all humans—selfishness, pride, vanity, arrogance. He becomes obsessed with achievement in order to fulfill these base desires. He wants glory, he wants to be loved, worshipped even. He puts little to no thought into the implications of his rash experiments; all he knows is he’s on the brink of something that has never been done before, and that is enough reason for him to do it.
Lynd Ward
ambition (n)
1) a: an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power
b: desire to achieve a particular end
Frankenstein was likely referring to the “ardent desire for rank, fame, or power” when he told Walton to “seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition.” This isn’t necessarily the definition we associate with ambition when we vaunt it as an admirable quality in interviews, wishing to imply work ethic and commitment. But the dictionary definition implies a much different underlying motivator of ambition: greed.
Why is it that us humans are obsessed with this kind of thoughtless achievement? What do we actually hope to accomplish, besides attaining glory, money, and distinction?
In our common understanding of the word, ambition (desire to achieve a particular end) is not evil; far from it. Intrinsic ambition is vitally important in keeping one engaged with one’s work. I am also not hating on anyone who has ambition by necessity; by all means, get that bag. But when it is external validation we crave, or status, or material goods we don’t need, what’s the point? All it does is line the pockets of those who’ve climbed the ladder through their own thoughtless ambition.
Romanticism emphasizes the importance of appreciation of nature. We see this love and appreciation for the tranquility of nature throughout Frankenstein; indeed, the only time Victor Frankenstein seems happy is when he’s in nature. At the end of his life, he voices regret at his ambition, saying that a simple life lived within one’s means, surrounded by people you love, would have been far more fulfilling. He says that someone who didn’t even know about the existence of the outside world would have been happier.
I wonder at this thought often. I think back on my childhood, before the Internet really took off, when if you wanted to see your friend, you’d call their home and ask if Victor was home, or ride your bike to their house to see them. Of course, this may simply be a nostalgia for the time of childhood, when I didn’t have rent or taxes and my mom made my dentist’s appointments.
Still, I can’t help but wonder how much different it would be to grow up in this day and age. I’d be constantly in contact with my friends, but never really connected to them. I might scroll TikTok instead of spending time with my family. I would crave the validation that came from my social media posts, rather than live in blissful ignorance of what awaited children of the future.
Success is different for everyone. For some, it might mean becoming a doctor, or a lawyer, or simply finding someone to spend your life with. For me, it means living a sustainable and balanced life, and making a living off something that matches my talents. But whatever your definition of success, I think Mary Shelley would only ask that you examine the purpose behind your desire to attain it, and examine if it will bring you fulfillment.
This is but one reason why the story and its message have lived on well past the author. Victor Frankenstein is a timeless example of one who works themself nearly to death, and he has nothing to show for it but grief and misery by the story’s end. He is a 19th-century personification of hustle culture, grinding towards power and glory while neglecting his family and friends for three years. His destruction is brought on by his own narrow-minded vanity, so much so that he fails to even see the horror of what he’s doing until it is too late.
Don’t be Victor Frankenstein.
